Scorching ... I begged my family’s pardon multiple times while reading, gasps escaping from my mouth. The horror in Enriquez’s work is never gratuitous ... Maintains an intimate, sisterly relationship with horror. It is close and familiar; we touch its skin casually, nearly lovingly ... Enriquez illuminates both the night and the ghosts, and she rejects her characters’ paralysis. She refuses silence and crafts stories so searing they cannot be buried or ignored.
Striking ... Entertaining, political and exquisitely gruesome, these stories summon terror against the backdrop of everyday horrors ... Lacks the thoroughly imagined lore of Enríquez’s 600-page novel ... But Enríquez still manages to suffuse these stories with a sense of place, politics and history ... Engrossing ... Strange and mesmerizing.
Enríquez unflinchingly regards the pain of others ... Feels as vivid and essential as Kafka’s tales. Considered by many to be a Nobel contender, Enríquez is surely on a path to Stockholm.
Chilling stories ... In Megan McDowell’s strong translation, Enríquez is at her best combining fantastical flair with real-life horrors that we prefer to look away from ... The sometimes unfortunate side of horror: just as often as it can be radical and challenge conventions, it can also fall victim to the same reductive stereotypes we see around us everyday.
All of them are certainly competent exercises in horror, but the most thrilling for me were those that took a breakneck spin into other generic territories ... Feels like something fresh ... Overall, however, A Sunny Place for Shady People feels uneven in its development. There are some stories here that are conceptually strong, but feel sketchy or banal in their realisation.
The difficulty for a writer in carving such a distinctive space is that it’s easy to tip into shtick. Sometimes Enriquez overdoes it ... It’s refreshing when some of the stories offer more subtle effects.
Evil presence seeps into and wafts up from the crevices of abandoned lots and institutional spaces, which transform into dreamscapes and leave physical wounds. This political charge brings real traumatic depth and texture to tales that are creepy enough to bring a shiver to every reader.
